Article:
First person war: Helmet cameras between testimony and performance

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dc.creatorSelvini, Federico
dc.date.accessioned2023-07-17T07:14:14Z
dc.date.available2023-07-17T07:14:14Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractIn the contemporary media landscape, the visual component of armed conflicts tends to be articulated in two distinct imaginaries. On one hand, we observe a ‘view from above’ generated by aircrafts, UAVs, and satellites; on the other, we encounter videos and photographs shot with consumer technologies by people on the ground such as regular soldiers, militiamen, guerrillas, NGOs, and civilians. Through the internet, these ‘low images’ have created a new imaginary. Among the devices that mark the iconography of the wars of the new millennium, a prominent place is occupied by minute-sized videographic instruments usually secured on the operator’s head, called helmet cameras. These devices are characterised by two elements: the first-person view and the prosthetic relationship with the human body. The machine vision hence presupposes a form of witnessing inextricably related to the subject’s mobility. Helmet cameras produce an embodied experience of war in which the visual perspective echoes the agency of a body at risk that is exposed to the stimuli and the dangers of the battlefield. Focusing primarily on the television docu-series Taking Fire (2016), the paper aims to explore all the elements that mark helmet cameras as a real topos of the contemporary war imagery, pointing to the relationship between vision, technical device, and body. The essay highlights recurring features of the images on both filmic and content levels, adopting an interdisciplinary perspective. Starting from studies on point-of-view shots and documentary filmmaking, the essay demonstrates how helmet camera images are profoundly influenced by several trends shaping the contemporary media landscape, including the post-photographic approach, the videogame world, the aesthetics of extreme sports, and the social network culture.en
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19734
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/20946
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherNECS
dc.publisher.placeMarburg
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2213-0217
dc.relation.ispartofseriesNECSUS_European Journal of Media Studies
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectdigital waren
dc.subjectembodied gazeen
dc.subjectglobal war on terrorismen
dc.subjectwar and new mediaen
dc.subjectwearable cameraen
dc.subject.ddcddc:300
dc.subject.ddcddc:700
dc.titleFirst person war: Helmet cameras between testimony and performanceen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2023-09-18T16:28:03
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://necsus-ejms.org/first-person-war-helmet-cameras-between-testimony-and-performance/
local.source.epage211
local.source.issue1
local.source.issueTitle#Ports
local.source.spage188
local.source.volume12

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